Research

Energy balance

Resistance training alone significantly increases lean mass in overweight/obese premenopausal women, even without a prescribed caloric deficit.

If your goal is to build muscle or improve your shape without losing weight, resistance training is effective even if you don't change your diet. Focus on progressive overload with compound exercises. However, be aware that without a caloric deficit, you will not lose fat, so your weight might stay the same or increase slightly due to muscle gain.

ModerateSupportsMEDIUM confidence
There was a significant linear increase for resistance training-only (β = 0.76; 95% CI = 0.32, 1.2; P = 0.002).
Todd A. Miller et al. · International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism · 2017

Why this rating

Small sample size, but statistically significant result for the RT-only group.

Source

Resistance Training Combined With Diet Decreases Body Fat While Preserving Lean Mass Independent of Resting Metabolic Rate: A Randomized Trial

Todd A. Miller et al. · International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism · 2017

DOI 10.1123/ijsnem.2017-0221

rct · n=40Cited 55×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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